A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS.
BY SECRETARY J. E. ROY.
In 1871, on a tour of home missionary supervision in Dakota, I came over the Missouri in a canoe, the only mode then of transportation to this Santee Agency School. I found here Rev. A. L. Riggs, who had come the year before to take up the newly initiated work of Rev. J. P. Williamson, who removed up the river thirty miles to open a mission upon the reservation of the Yankton Sioux. At that time Mr. Riggs had already displaced the cabin home and cabin school-house by a frame residence and a frame chapel school-house about 30×50. Now I find that the chapel has been spread out upon the sides and elongated in the rear, with sliding doors to shut off each of the several new parts into additional recitation and Sunday-school rooms, and the whole to be crowded for morning prayers and Sabbath service. There have also come on, the Dakota Home for Young Women, the Bird’s Nest for Little Children and the Cottage for Little Boys, each of the three under a matron, and the Dakota Hall for Young Men, with one of the teachers’ families there in charge. Then come the well-built shops for shoemaking, carpentry and blacksmithing; and lastly, the three-story dining-hall, with accommodation for a hundred and fifty at the tables, with rooms for teachers and workers, and a whole story yet to be finished off, when funds are in hand, to accommodate more girls. The whole is heated by furnaces and supplied with the most approved apparatus for cooking, baking and laundry work.
But, beyond this expanding of the shell, I find the inner institution matured into a good deal of character and strength. Though it has grown by itself, it has come to be very much like our best boarding-schools at the South. The course of the year makes up more than two hundred pupils, and there are now here one hundred and thirty. The mass of them have learned the English, and the classes are taught in it. Many of them have been advanced in English studies. The régime everywhere takes on the Christian type. A great majority of the scholars have been brought to a personal acquaintance with Christ. A good number of teachers and preachers have already been sent forth. Music—vocal and instrumental—brings in its refining influence. A splendid corps of teachers is employed. Every pupil, male and female, has some work to do. The shops for blacksmithing, carpentry and shoemaking have each a competent workman as instructor, and those departments are run under the closest inspection. I have seen one Indian doing a fine job of shoeing horses, that most important of all work in blacksmithing.
Mr. Riggs, the father of the Theological Institute of Chicago Seminary, has brought the same feature in here. And so for two weeks, about twenty-five men, young pastors and divinity students, coming in from their fields, are drilled in the practical Bible doctrines and methods of preaching and pastoral work. The lectures have run from two to four in a day. Clearly it has been a season of stimulus and of replenishment to the young brethren. Those who were pleased with the young people from this school, who sang at the Chicago Council, at the New Haven Anniversary and over the East, last fall, will be glad to learn that at least half a hundred of equal cultivation could be sent out as specimens. Three native teachers are here employed, and they can use either language. It has been a great delight to me to hear Pastor Artemas Ehnamani preach in his own pulpit in the presence of his church, that numbers a couple of hundred, and without the chopping up of his address by the intervention of an interpreter.
THE CHINESE.
BY REV. F. B. PERKINS.
Mr. Pond has just left for San Francisco, after a week of exhausting toil for the Chinese missions here and in Santa Barbara. For his relief, I have undertaken to write this letter, that his vacation—for so he calls it—may not be altogether farcical. I do it the more readily for the opportunity it gives me of saying some things which your readers would not be likely to learn from him.
It has long been my conviction that, in proportion to the means employed, no form of Christian work on this coast yields so large a revenue as Chinese missions. I am sure this is so as regards that carried on under the direction of the A. M. A. And the explanation I find largely in the Christ-like devotion of your superintendent and his coadjutors.
It is but a single illustration of this spirit which Mr. Pond’s recent visit offers. Both at Santa Barbara and San Diego the missions have lost their rented premises, and are literally homeless. It seems imperative that, if the work is to go on, they should no longer be subject to the disabilities of rented buildings. But it is a fixed principle of this mission, on no account to incur a debt. So it is of Mr. Pond, as regards himself; but for Christ’s needy ones he has more than once accepted the burden. This he has now again done. In Santa Barbara he purchased a lot for $600, for which land he is personally liable, but which he holds in trust for the mission. On that lot, by the close of this week, a chapel will be erected by a Christian friend, at a cost of $340. For this property a moderate rental is to be paid by the mission, and when the sums thus paid shall amount to the price of the land it, together with the building, (toward which the little Chinese band have already paid $150), becomes the property of the mission. In San Diego the course pursued has been the same, only that here, owing to the rise in real estate, the amount assumed by Mr. Pond and one other friend of the work, is $2,500. By similar acts of Christian self-sacrifice in the past, the mission has already become possessed of property to the value of $10,000, all without the burden of debt, or an even temporary diversion of its funds.
But is the mission work worth all this toil and sacrifice? Mr. Pond, in a carefully guarded statement, says, that since the establishment of this mission the Chinese converts number over 600, at least fifty having been added during the past year; and this statement, you observe, makes no mention of results wide reaching in their beneficence which do not involve this radical heart work. If this statement be accepted as correct, the question is answered. But is there really any such a character as a Christian Chinese? Many persons say, “No.” It is but a day or two since a Christian man denied it, in my hearing. My reply to him was to ask for his standard of judgment. If his demand was that Chinamen should cease to become Chinese, and, abandoning all their associations, habits and prejudices, become simply Americans, doubtless they are not Christians; but in that case, neither are converts from many another nationality to be reckoned as Christians. Or if absolute freedom from infirmities and faults be made the test, this would shut them out, but it would shut out many others also. Alas! it would be fatal to the hopes of the writer. But if the test be the same we apply to ourselves, love more or less enthusiastic, loyalty true, even if troubling, to our Divine Master, and our judgments be according to the law of charity, then we have no more reason to look askant upon a Chinese than upon a Bohemian, or a negro brother. The grace of God works out in these and in those alike, encountering similar obstacles and being triumphant in about an equal degree.
Ex uno disce omnes. He was a house servant, and naturally not of amiable disposition or agreeable ways. But some twelve months ago his employer began to notice a change in his bearing, a more cheerful observance of his duties and a generally pleasanter manner. Awhile ago he came to the lady, and said: “Mrs. B., I’m a Christian. I don’t know as you have thought it, but I am.” “Yes, Jim,” was the reply, “I have seen it for some months past.” Yet he is as much a Chinaman now as ever, and no more faultless perhaps than an American Christian. But he is “following on,” reaching out after likeness to the Master, and that is about as much as most of us can claim.
“But so much of the work seems fruitless owing to the migratory life these people live.” Well, twelve years ago I was among the prospectors of Southern Colorado. During one of our meetings, I noticed a Chinaman enter the room. Through all the service he maintained a respectful and interested attitude, and at the close, taking his hand, I asked him; “You sabe (understand)? You know our Jesus, our Saviour.” “Yes, I know.” “Where did you learn?” “San Fis.” “Who taught you?” “Miss Loomis (Rev. Dr. Loomis).” So I had come across one of these waifs in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and two years after he had gone out from his Christian teacher. I don’t know how clear his views of sin and salvation were, nor how hearty his trust in the atoning Saviour. That could only be learned by longer intercourse, and I have never seen him since. But he knew enough to find his way into that little cabin in the wilds of Colorado, and to speak with apparent intelligence and sympathy of the things of the kingdom. Nor could I doubt that he stood as the representative of very many who go out from these mission schools, and are lost to all but the all-seeing eye of Infinite Love.
The work in their behalf may seem to be, but it is not, fruitless. From this number let us not doubt it, many will stand forth at last, redeemed unto God, monuments alike to the unspeakable grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the patient fidelity of Christ’s disciples.
BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.
MISS D. E. EMERSON, SECRETARY.
Please remember to renew the “shares” in the support of teachers. Those who desire it can have their shares transferred from year to year to new fields, thus obtaining more varied knowledge of the work from the missionary correspondence.